Party Animals!

For my daughter’s 7th birthday party at home, we decided having wild animals in the house would be a great idea…. and also a petting zoo! (HA!) There’s a local company that brings animals to your house and hosts. ( Animals ) You can choose a theme of group of animals, or a la cart pets. I REALLY wanted goats, but alas… it was not my birthday party.

My daughter chose the Australian Theme. It was awesome! I’ve been collecting paper bags and figured there must be a way to make them into safari vests. I scanned pinterest and youtube and VOILA! Found an easy tutorial (after only about 3 searches) based on the type of vests I wanted to make, and the kind of bags I had.

Right as the kids came in, they decorated vests on my table cloth covered table 🙂 and grabbed a plastic “pith helmet” or for everyone normal, a safari hat. By the time the guests arrived, made the costumes, chit chatted and maybe grabbed a snack

Then it was time to start the show.

We could have done the whole thing outside, but recently there have been terrible wildfires in Washington and the smoke was pretty bad on party day. We opted to squish everything into our entryway instead. This made it difficult for me to zip around quasi-unobtrusively to snap photos.

Bearded Dragon

The bearded dragons were a big hit, and so chill!

Blue-Tongued Skink

Frilled Lizard

Displaying that awesome frill

Opal the wallaby is the hardest working momma around! This girl had a week(ish) old joey hidden away in her pouch. Imagine that! Going to work a week after having your baby, and then sit in a pen while little humans pet and poke at you while you eat your way through the ordeal. … oh wait… that’s all moms.

There were also sugar gliders and lots of snakes. I’m still trying to figure out my camera, so a lot of those shots were pretty blurry. The highlight of the show was the wrangler explaining how hard the sugar gliders are to have as pets as it peed all over her. The kids particularly liked that, the parents notsomuch.

We finished up with hand washing, pipe cleaner snake beading, snacks & cake. Oh, the most fun part was the photo op I had set up. It got a little lost among the excitement, but I wanted a place for the parents to get a fun pic of their kid at the party so I set up a ribbon curtain and had the kids hold a prop Jeep. I ended up taking the photos with my nikon, but the little safari adventurers seemed to get a kick out of it. I’m ending the post with the hilarious reality of party-crash with my own kids. I realized after everyone left that I did not manage a photo of my kids together with the Jeep. We attempted to do this after guests were gone, presents opened, sugar crash hit. Enjoy!

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2 comments on “Party Animals!”

The sugar gliders actually make fun pets, if you are a bit nocturnal yourself. We got two “girls” one year only to discover that one was a boy. We had babies and more babies for years. Most people couldn’t keep them alive, but we didn’t have that problem. We finally had to pay for teeny-tiny vasectomies so that we could stop the unplanned breeding. They were great fun and pretty tame for us. The veterinarian said that everything about our experience was unusual (normally they are wilder, don’t breed, and die young). Sounds like a fun party idea with your kids. Good job, mom!

Yea, the handler said they mark their territory constantly.
It was a lot of fun, i think the kids liked the bearded dragons the most. They were so docile and still. Everyone got an up close look and pet 🙂